


Study #17

by beetlejoos



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Bad Parent Martin Whitly, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Good Parent Gil Arroyo, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:00:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28110555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetlejoos/pseuds/beetlejoos
Summary: It's been a long day and a tough case.Malcolm and Gil end up having a difficult conversation that neither of them saw coming.
Comments: 32
Kudos: 90





	Study #17

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah... so I have no idea where this came from! But this is a random little thing I ended up writing last night. 
> 
> Comments welcome! Hope you enjoy 💜

_… insertion of the nails using a blunt force instrument…_

_…lividity suggests time of death between 3 and 6 a.m…_

_…blood loss from multiple wounds, including…_

Malcolm stares at the coroner’s report spread over his desk for what feels like the hundredth time, frustration boiling in his gut. Like the last ninety-nine times he's read it over, there’s no new insight he finds, no sudden revelation. _He’s got nothing,_ he thinks sourly.

He gives up and tries to blink away the gritty film that's settled over his eyes, slurring the words on the page into grey streaks. He’s _so close._ He can _feel_ how close he is; the key to understanding their killer is _already there_ , lodged somewhere in the back of his brain, _just_ out of his reach. It’s so much more maddening to know he has all the pieces and simply hasn’t managed to fit them together. He just needs the right mental spark to illuminate things... to shine a light on the shadowy figure he can half-glimpse in his mind’s eye, and make his profile complete.

Instead of what it is now. A half-assembled puzzle; a figure glimpsed through the wrong end of a telescope. _Come_ _on_ _,_ he thinks to himself furiously, because his team can’t do _anything_ if he doesn’t give them something to go on. The next victim is out there _right now_ , while he just sits here and re-reads Edrisa’s disturbingly neat handwriting, again and again and…

The sound of the buzzer makes him jump. His eyes fly up to the half-moon of a window at the far end of his apartment - but he’s not worked all through the night; it’s still dark outside. Malcolm’s not expecting anyone. It only occurs to him too late, once he’s already pressed the button for the intercom, that it might be _another_ impromptu visit from his mother. She’s been stopping by more and more recently - psychological warfare in response to him changing the locks for the third time this year. _A grilling over his diet or his dating life is going to_ _push his headache into a full blown migraine…_

“Hey, kid.”

Malcolm relaxes immediately. Gil sounds flat, as exhausted as he is, but that’s to be expected. They’ve all been working flat out to catch their latest killer - three victims and counting, all of them priests, all of them found in various gory poses heavy with religious symbolism. Malcolm’s been trying (not particularly successfully, he suspects) to downplay just how fascinating he’s found that, because Gil had looked downright _offended_ at the iconography for the last victim… who’d been found nailed to a makeshift cross in his own garden.

The man strolls into Malcolm’s apartment, and sure enough the exhaustion Malcolm can feel weighing him down is written all over his face. “How did I know you’d still be working?” muses Gil, and Malcolm shrugs, not even bothering to look sheepish. He’s been sleeping even worse than usual recently. He might as well make himself useful, given he’s condemned to a restless night anyway.

“Is everything ok?”

“You tell me,” says Gil casually. Off Malcolm’s blank look he carries on. “Apparently you were meant to be at something called a ‘petite soiree’ this evening?” He keeps an admirably straight face, but somehow manages to smirk using only his eyebrows. “Your mother called me to ask where you were.” Malcolm groans.

“Oh, god...”

“Yeah. I told her I kept you working late at the station.”

“Thank you,” says Malcolm fervently. “I missed the last one as well. I must’ve left my phone on silent…”

“You owe me one,” says Gil, amused. He pauses, more sober, when he adds, “she sounded worried about you. Says you’re not sleeping.”

“That’s hardly a cause for concern,” points out Malcolm. “It’s pretty much my default setting.” Gil doesn’t look impressed.

“All the same, kid. You have been looking a little… frayed around the edges. I know this case is a tough one, but you’ve gotta look after yourself.” Malcolm narrows his eyes.

“Is that why you’re here? Did my mother send you?”

“ _No,_ ” says Gil pointedly, _“_ I can be concerned about you all by myself,” and Malcolm ducks his head at the light rebuke. “I just thought I’d swing by on my way home… see how you’re doing.” He’s always slightly disarmed when Gil’s so upfront about checking in on him… even though it shouldn’t take him aback, not anymore. Like always, it lights a small, warm glow somewhere in his chest.

“I’m fine,” he says - fairly convincingly he thinks, so it seems unfair when this only earns him a _look_ from the older man. “I’m not getting anywhere with the case,” he adds, “if that’s what you mean.” He knows it’s not, but he’d rather talk about the case than his latest string of nightmares, and Gil knows him well enough to go with it. “The… _perspective_ is all wrong. I thought our killer saw himself as doing god’s work, but there was something almost… sacrilegious about how we found Father Lewis. It doesn’t fit with the others.”

“Yeah, well... if he’s a believer, he’s missed a few of the key commandments,” mutters Gil. Malcolm opens his mouth to say something about faith and personal interpretation, and then decides against it.

“Drink?” he offers instead, and Gil nods. He wanders over to the desk as Malcolm goes to the drinks trolley.

“I have a scotch somewhere I think you’re gonna like,” he says, “or I’ve got bourbon?” When Gil doesn’t answer, he glances up to ask again - and immediately forgets the question when he sees the _look_ on Gil’s face.

For a terrible moment Malcolm thinks he’s going to pass out, or keel over. His eyes are fixed on something on Malcolm’s desk and whatever it is has _shaken_ him. All the colour seems to have drained out of him in the few seconds that Malcolm’s back has been turned, as pale as if he's seen a ghost. He’s been with Gil at all kinds of gruesome crime scenes; seen him face down armed killers, but he doesn’t ever remember seeing _that_ look on his face.

Before Malcolm can find his voice and ask what’s going on, Gil suddenly seems to remember himself. “Scotch,” he rasps, and then he clears his throat. “Scotch is fine.”

“What… what’s wrong?”

Gil finally tears his eyes off the papers and glances up at Malcolm. Instantly his expression is replaced with one of mild alarm at the look on his face. “Hey - kid, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

“Gil -”

The older man is already waving a hand dismissively, but the profiler in him couldn’t _miss_ the signs practically _screaming_ at him - _turning away to hide his facial expressions; buying himself time to compose himself; putting more distance between them -_ and Malcolm can’t stop himself. He forgets the scotch and is crossing the room towards him before he can think twice. “You’re not fine. What is it?”

He sees Gil’s shoulders tense, hears the huff of breath before the man turns back to him. His face is now firmly schooled in an expression of light annoyance. “It was nothing, ok? I came over here to see how _you’re_ doing -"

“You’re lying,” says Malcolm, unable to stop himself. Gil blinks, thrown by the accusation, but Malcolm’s eyes are already back on the desk, trying to spot what it is that might have triggered such a reaction— _Edrisa’s report, his own scribbled notes on possible motivations, a battered bible, his father’s sketches…._

His father’s sketches. One of them is on the top of the pile, labelled _S_ _tudy #17_ in Martin Whitly’s ornate, flourished handwriting. It’s a sketch of a hand, drawn from several different angles, some in cross-section, some with the skin removed - all with a thick metal spike hammered through the palm. _That’s_ what Gil was looking at when that _look_ , that look that _doesn’t belong there_ appeared on his face. But when he glances back up at Gil, he doesn’t look that way anymore.

He looks _pissed._

“Bright, I told you, I’m _fine._ Now would you just _drop it_?” And maybe that would be the sensitive thing to do - to do the thing Gil is asking him to do; to respect his privacy and give him space and that’s what Malcolm _wants_ to do… _only he can’t_ , because his mind has already left the station and is thundering down the tracks, a horrible conclusion drawing into view ahead of him.

 _Gil isn’t frightened by the Surgeon. Gil isn’t squeamish about blood and guts._ So it can’t be the drawing that’s spooked him, but the fact that it’s _here_ , on Malcolm’s desk… and why would Gil be scared about Malcolm looking at it, unless…

Unless….

“It’s for the case,” he blurts out, and Gil looks at him in complete confusion.

It had only occurred to Malcolm a couple of hours ago, when he’d remembered the sketches from his father’s notebooks. It’s a series for an unrealised experiment that involved bolting the victim in place with different metal pins - through the hands, the spine, the abdomen - each one strategically placed to ensure maximum pain for the subject without immediately causing them to bleed out. Father Lewis’ mock crucifixion had reminded him of it; made him wonder if the position of the nails had suggested a specific kind of medical knowledge that might prove useful in narrowing down his profile. It had all made sense at the time… but now he can’t seem to put his logic into words; not with Gil’s horrified reaction emptying his skull of everything else. “I... I was trying to see if the killer… I thought maybe, if they had medical skills - that’s why I was looking at the drawings. I wasn’t just _studying_ them -“

Understanding finally dawns in Gil’s eyes and with it, a look of pain. “Bright…”

“I swear, it was for the case - Father Lewis - this isn’t -“

“Kid, _stop,_ ” says Gil firmly, “I _know_ that, ok? You don’t have to explain.”

It doesn’t _feel_ like he’s lying… but Malcolm’s heart is already hammering in his chest; his vision blurring. He _wants_ to believe him; more than anything, because the idea that Gil would think anything else - would think Malcolm’s been sitting up, late at night, poring over his father’s sketches for _any other,_ _darker_ _reason_ makes him feel like he’s been hollowed out. “Then why?” he croaks. Gil’s eyes are immediately darting away, a look of frustration on his face, and _how can Malcolm stop pushing when there’s no other explanation?_

“Bright, there is _nothing wrong with me,_ ok? Can you just stop trying to _profile_ everything and take a break for five goddamn minutes -"

“I can’t,” says Malcolm helplessly, and Gil looks thoroughly exasperated.

“I swear to God - you are making a mountain out of a molehill -"

“You’re hiding _something_ and it’s either about me or my father.” Gil clenches his jaw and Malcolm cuts in before Gil can contradict him, desperation leaking through his words. “I’m sorry - but I can’t _unsee_ that, so _you need to tell me._ Please, Gil… just tell me what I’m missing.” Because he thought he knew _everything_ _._ He’s learned every victim, every sketch, every angle of his father’s crimes and it’s both awful and the only way he knows how to handle it. He knows every horrifying detail of Martin Whitly’s murders, and he knows the man standing in front of him… _so why is it he can’t make sense of what just happened?_ The idea there’s something he might have missed, something that could affect Gil like that without Malcolm seeing _why,_ makes panic spiral in his gut.

Gil’s still not speaking; he has that look in his eyes like he’s debating what to say. Like he doesn’t understand that what Malcolm needs is the truth _. Unless you’ve already guessed the truth_ , murmurs a cruel little voice in his mind. _Like father, like son. When it really comes down to it, even Gil thinks so…_

Gil lets out a sigh and rubs a hand over his face. “How about we sit down?”

He follows Gil obediently to the couch. Sits down, half-dazed, when Gil does. There's a look on the man's face - _frustration, anxiety, regret?_ \- but Malcolm's too strung out to tell what it is. His higher brain functions seem to be temporarily suspended.

“The drawing just… took me by surprise, ok?” Gil says finally. Malcolm says nothing. He knows that’s not the whole answer: he knows Gil knows he knows. There’s a few more seconds in which Gil seems to be making up his mind, and then he settles himself on the couch. Malcolm tenses in spite of himself… because it means he was right _;_ there is _something..._

“The night we arrested your father… well, you know what happened. We found evidence, in the basement. Enough to lock him up and throw away the key. Notebooks, sketches. You’ve probably seen them all.” Malcolm nods, because of course he has. “Most of them were records of the things he’d already tried. We could match them to the Surgeon’s victims pretty easily. Others, we didn’t have a body to go with them. And one batch - the batch with _that_ one,” he nods to Malcolm’s desk, the edge of the drawing still in view, “looked more like ideas. Stuff he maybe wanted to try, but hadn’t actually done.”

Gil pauses and Malcolm doesn’t understand, because _he knew all of this;_ none of this is new, none of this is an _answer_. Gil must sense his confusion; he clears his throat and soldiers on. “There were notes, in the pile,” he says. “I don’t know that they ever made it into evidence. There was _a lot_ of evidence and they were just... scribbles, really. But from the notes, it was pretty clear that your father had an order in mind for the experiments. He’d planned out his next five or six murders… in detail. And that one _…_ ‘study number 17’… turns out, that was next on his list.”

It takes Malcolm a moment - an unforgivably long moment - to understand. To put the pieces together with the discomfort on Gil’s face, and finally see.

“Oh,” he says faintly. His voice is barely there.

He thinks of the drawing. The spikes, nailed through each carefully-sketched hand; skewering the figure’s torso; hammered into their back. Gil's own hand reaches out tentatively to touch his shoulder and Malcolm thinks he’s going to throw up; he flinches back and closes his eyes. He must have seen that study a hundred times. It’d always been easier for him to look at than some of the other sketches, because it didn’t correspond to an actual murder that his father had carried out. It had felt safer, somehow - a little glimpse into the workings of the Surgeon’s brain that was monstrous, but victimless.

He’d never known he was looking at the blueprint for how his father would have killed Gil.

“I just… wasn't expecting to see it again,” offers Gil. “Kid? You ok?”

“They never said that at the trial,” he whispers. He can feel Gil shrug against the couch cushions.

“Like I said… they had a lot of evidence to choose from.”

“You never said.” He looks down at his hands, clenched on his knees. His right hand is trembling but he doesn’t even bother to try and hide it. “You never told me…”

“Kid… there was nothing to tell,” says Gil helplessly.

Malcolm keeps on staring down at his hand, shaking, resting against his knee. The sketch keeps flickering in front of him, his stomach churning with nausea. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles and Gil’s hand, warm and unbloodied, lands on his own, gripping it firmly.

“See… _this_ is why I didn’t want to tell you,” he says, a tinge of exasperation in his voice. “Bright… Malcolm, would you look at me?”

It takes him a second, but then he does. At all the worry and vexation and fondness on Gil’s face. “It took me by surprise, is all. I haven’t thought about it for years. If it was up to me, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.” Beneath the sickening sense of horror, Malcolm feels a flare of guilt... because he’s pretty much forced Gil into telling him, against the man’s own wishes. He hadn’t listened. Hadn’t understood what he’d been asking. He realises Gil’s trying to catch his eye again. “Seriously, kid. It’s not worth this.”

 _He needs to get a grip._ He’s already made Gil share something that must have haunted his dreams for years; now he’s making the man _reassure him_ as well. He takes a couple of deep, measured breaths, squeezing Gil’s hand before he lets it go again. He aims for a neutral expression and probably fails miserably. “I’m sorry,” he says again, but this time he means for the last few minutes, and he hopes he sounds less abjectly miserable than before. “I… I shouldn’t have pushed it.”

Gil grunts in what sounds like agreement. “Just… save the profiling for the suspects, ok?” Malcolm nods meekly. _Gil still could have lied,_ he knows, _or refused to answer him._ He would have had every right. But he chose not to leave him spiralling, knowing what that would do to him.

Malcolm’s eyes drift back to the desk and he suddenly realises the offending sketch is still in view; the contorted figure writhing on the page, neatly set down from Martin Whitly’s brain. He goes to grab it, snatching up the various sheets. He can’t bring himself to put them back in his drawer so he shoves them in the trash instead, stuffing them as far down as they can go.

When he turns back, Gil is watching him with a raised eyebrow. “Scotch,” Malcolm says by way of response, “you wanted scotch -" and he turns back to the drinks trolley, pouring two far-too-generous measures with unsteady hands. Gil accepts the glass wordlessly and watches as Malcolm knocks his back in a couple of gulps. He ignores the obvious side eye and pours himself a second.

“Malcolm…” _First name means Gil is serious._ It’s followed by a long silence, and Malcolm tries to brace himself, not sure what to expect. After a pause, Gil sighs. “Before… I know you’re not your father, ok? If I see you looking over his sketches or… reading his case files… that’s not where my mind goes. That’s _never_ where my mind goes. I just see _you._ ”

“I’m surprised you can look at me at all right now,” says Malcolm without thinking, and immediately regrets it at the look of shock, and then _anger,_ that breaks over Gil’s face. He stammers: “I just… I mean -“

“You think _he’s_ what I think about, when I look at you?” demands Gil. He sounds _offended_ , his eyes blazing. “That’s what you think?”

“I didn’t mean -“

“I know what you meant,” snaps Gil. He looks both hurt and _furious_ , and Malcolm wonders how he manages to keep making things worse.

 _Of course that’s not what Gil thinks._ Gil’s _always_ seen the best in him, has always been there for him, and Malcolm can’t even accept that gift without ruining it. Without suggesting it’s in some way _false_ , or something that Malcolm hasn’t even _noticed…_ He puts his glass back down clumsily and passes a hand over his eyes, trying to _get a fucking grip_. He can feel a sob starting to climb out of his throat and clenches his jaw… because that would be the final, pathetic straw to cap off this whole evening…

The floorboards creak in front of him. He didn’t even realise Gil had gotten up, had moved right in front of him, and a second later he’s being pulled into a hug. He’s melting into it before he has time to think, a small sob bursting out of him that he manages to bury against the older man’s shoulder, pressing his face into the material there. “It’s ok, kid,” Gil murmurs and _it isn’t,_ _it so clearly isn’t_ , but for a second it almost feels like it might be.

“I should just… stop talking, shouldn’t I?” he mumbles, and Gil huffs out a sound of amusement.

“I think what you probably need is sleep.” Malcolm lets out a breathless chuckle of his own because if he didn’t think he was getting a good night's sleep _before_ Gil showed up here tonight, now it’s pretty much guaranteed. He pulls away, wiping his eyes.

“Mmm. Not sure that’s gonna be happening.” He can feel Gil’s eyes on him, warm concern radiating towards him, and does his best to look composed.

“…Give it a shot,” suggests Gil, after a moment. “I’ll wake you up if things go sideways.”

Malcolm blinks at him. “No - you need to sleep too,” he points out. “You should go home… we have to start early tomorrow -"

“I’ll just be thinking about the case anyway,” says Gil dismissively. He glances back at the paperwork strewn over Malcolm’s desk and picks up the copy of Edrisa’s report with a frown. “I’ll take another pass over what we’ve got. Tomorrow morning… maybe things will look different. We can get on and catch the guy.” He sits down in Malcolm’s chair, gathering papers, and then looks back up at him a moment later when he realises Malcolm hasn’t actually moved. He’s just staring at him in bewilderment. “That’s your cue, kid,” he says pointedly. “Get some shut eye.”

“But you -" Gil fixes him with one of his sterner _what now?_ looks and Malcolm flounders. “You… Are you sure?”

“One hundred per cent.” Gil’s already putting the papers into orderly little stacks, like the conversation's done with. He glances over at his bed, then back at Gil at his desk, before he hesitantly starts to move. Much as he doesn’t really want his subconscious to get stuck into what he’s learned this evening, some of the fear he always feels when faced with having to sleep is lessened by the knowledge Gil is going to be at the other end of the room. The second his brain shows him his father, or the Girl in the Box, or that sketch (god, the very _idea_ of that sketch turns his stomach now)… Gil will hear, and wake him up.

Malcolm sits down gingerly on the mattress and looks back over to where he's sitting, in a little pool of lamplight, at the far end of the room. “Gil?”

The man glances up. “… Thanks,” he finishes, a little weakly. He has no idea how the evening ended up like this. _He’s pretty sure, all things considered, that it shouldn’t be_ _Gil_ _looking after_ _him_ _right now…_

“Night, kid.”

 _… but somehow,_ thinks Malcolm, finally lying back and closing his eyes, _somehow…_ _he_ _always does._


End file.
